But after a while the “instinct” of a collector comes into play to protect him against these and other frauds. He cannot exactly reason out and state why an offered piece is “wrong,” but he feels that it is not right; which means that the “altogether” of the glass suggests to his subconscious mind something which, though not expressed, is a good reason for not buying the glass. But this “instinct” only comes after much practice in collecting, and repeated turning of pages for reference, in a book such as this; a collector’s books should not be read once and then laid aside; they should be referred to on every occasion, even after the “instinct” has begun to stir.
LIKELIHOOD AND IMPROBABILITY
Extraordinary chances come to the “picking-up” collector, I know, but he does well to keep in mind the probability or the unlikelihood of his “find” being real. It is unlikely that he should more than once happen upon a Jacobite glass, for example; and again, if he sees a fine “Trafalgar” glass exhibited in a small jeweller’s shop, with no other glass at all or any other “curios,” the probability is that some fraudulent person has planted that false glass there, in what is a likely place to attract and deceive a collector who “picks up.”
THE ABSOLUTE FRAUDS
Old English and Irish glass has a soft and mellow tone, both of look and sound; it has a calm, respectable, honest appearance, as of quality and honesty combined. Fitness for its purpose, good workmanship, some quaintness perhaps, but not much fantasy, are visible in it; if it is decorated, the decoration has been done well, but without lavish artistic imagination.
Now about the forgeries of it there is something hard and fast, an appearance too shiny and shining, and a rigidity of copying. Seldom are even two old glasses belonging to a set quite alike, but the forgeries are exact replicas by the hundred. See one, you see them all; but see one real old glass, you notice differences in it from all others. Forged glass, recently made, is “buffed” or polished on the wheel all over its surface; old glass was never buffed, and its polish rather resembles that of old furniture due to “elbow grease”—the polish comes of long washing, wiping, and drying.
I have already described the differences of tint. Forged glasses are clumsy imitations in this, for the forgers do not try to give the old dark tints—they use lead that is not so impure as the old lead was, and therefore produces less visible oxide.
The cutting of old glass, done by hand, produced and displays irregularities; so does modern cutting. But the old irregularities were due to a lack of machine-like precision, and were natural, accidental irregularities: the modern irregularities are (so to speak) mechanical, and obviously due to haste and cheapness of production. Labour and time were no great matters with the old workmen; the counterfeit work is obviously done with the minimum of labour and time.
Modern English-made glass has often a good ring when flicked; foreign-made frauds on the old have not, or have it seldom.